Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

The Ghana-Togo Boundary, 1914-1982

1983; SAGE Publishing; Volume: 18; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

1868-6869

R. Bagulo Bening,

Agriculture and Rural Development Research

The original boundary between the British colony of the Gold Coast and the German protectorate of Togo included only the of the Keta and Peki districts in the former territory and also divided the Mamprusi, Dagomba and Gonja states farther north1. The occupation of Togo, after the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, and its subsequent partition between France and Britain, merely exacerbated the Ewe problem. Some of these people in the German protectorate were included in Western Togoland which was governed as an integral part of the Gold Coast, while the previously divided northern states were virtually consolidated under British administration. When the Gold Coast achieved political independence in 1957, Western Togoland was incorporated into the new sovereign state of Ghana while Eastern Togoland or the French portion of the former German protectorate became the Republic of Togo in I9602. Until recently, the Ghana-Togo boundary continued to excite considerable international interest mainly because of the socio-economic and political problems created by the partition of Eweland3. However, world attention was focussed on this boundary during the 1981 armed conflict between the indigenous Nanumba and the settler Konkomba over forced communal labour for the chief of Bimbila in which several settlements were destroyed and over a thousand people were killed. Allegations that the Konkombas from Togo fought alongside their kinsmen in Ghana, claims of foreign influence in the conflict and the alleged demand of some Ghanaian Konkombas for secession caused some friction with Togo4. The military confrontation demonstrated the continuing problems caused by the colonial partition of Africa along the northern section of this particular boundary. This article focusses on the evolution of the Anglo-French boundary in Togoland which ultimately became the common boundary between the two sovereign West African states of Ghana and Togo.